Johanna Kaplan, LOSS OF MEMORY IS ONLY TEMPORARY: Stories (Art of the Story)
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[0:58]Johanna Kaplan is the author of the loss of memory is only temporary stories
[1:03]Joanna is the author also of other people's lives a collection of stories and oh my America a novel
[1:10]Her books were finalist for the National Book Award the American Book Award and the Hemingway Foundation
[1:15]Pen Award and she has twice received the National Jewish Book Award for fiction as well as the Edward Lewis
[1:21]Wallant Award and the Kenneth B. Smilin slash present tense literary word
[1:26]Her stories as is in reviews have appeared in commentary Harper's magazine moment
[1:31]The New York Times book review and city journal and her stories have been widely anthologized
[1:35]Her essay tales of my great-grandfathers appears in the shock and anthology who we are on being and not being a Jewish American writer a
[1:42]Native New Yorker
[1:43]She lives in Manhattan and for many years worked as a teacher of emotionally disturbed children at Mount Sinai Hospital
[1:49]She is currently at work on a novel with a tentative title forbidden
[1:53]Welcome Johanna. Thanks so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss loss of memory is only temporary stories
[2:00]It's my pleasure and and honor to be with you Zibi
[2:04]I think this is a great honor. It's it's very flattering and I'm really thrilled and pleased to be here
[2:12]Oh, thank you. Well, it's a beautiful collection of stories
[2:16]I loved the preface by Francine Pro's who I also adore and of course Myra Coleman's beautiful
[2:24]Illustration on the cover
[2:26]I'm got so lucky with that cover. Oh my gosh. It's beautiful
[2:30]Yes, so you have such an interesting story
[2:33]So tell tell listeners who might not be familiar with your work how you had this massively successful book and
[2:41]We're nominated for everything for other people's lives and also America and
[2:49]And you've been teaching tell tell us like your life, you know, the life of a national book award nominated author who's now back with this new collection
[2:59]I feel very very lucky to be back because I
[3:03]Despite all the awards that I did win the book Scott really very little attention aside from those awards
[3:11]and many places gave me awards and sort of dinners that I went to and spoke at
[3:18]But otherwise I really did feel that my books had become a secret between me and
[3:24]Those few people like cousins and friends and the people who actually donated the awards, but then it was gone
[3:33]And I had a very busy life because I was teaching full-time. I taught for 35 years
[3:41]Which you know, I mean even to me that sounds like
[3:46]What what did you teach in where? I taught emotionally disturbed children who were hospitalized for psychiatric illness
[3:55]It was a board of education job, but I was placed within a hospital setting
[4:01]And so there was a very small school
[4:04]There were you know like five teachers and that was the school. Well
[4:09]We had I think three or four classes and in the earlier years
[4:13]I taught the younger children that is like elementary grades. It was always
[4:17]Like kids from seven or no actually
[4:21]I taught even five-year-olds, but they but they had to be able to sort of keep up
[4:27]I don't mean academically. I mean they had to be able to sort of keep up in a social way in the class
[4:34]otherwise I'm bad them
[4:36]And so I taught the kids from five to nine say and then
[4:41]Toward the end of my teaching career
[4:43]I taught the high school kids the adolescents and at that time also several times a week
[4:50]I went to another setting where there was a GED program for kids who had dropped out of school
[4:57]Out of high school and who wanted to get their high school diplomas. Wow
[5:02]Okay, so I cut you off. Sorry. You were talking about that you were you didn't get very much attention
[5:06]You were teaching full-time. Keep going
[5:09]So I was teaching full-time, but I did keep on writing
[5:14]And ultimately and I did get many stories published
[5:18]There are a bunch of stories and actually in a villa that are not in this collection because they didn't quite belong
[5:24]They didn't fit with this
[5:26]So I'm hoping that there will be another
[5:30]Collection that would include both that novella and the short stories
[5:35]And so I did keep on writing, but as I got older that got harder to do
[5:40]To manage it all and so I would say I haven't written as much as I would have wished to write
[5:47]But I have a novel that I intend to go back to
[5:51]I mean, I left it some years
[5:54]I don't know maybe five years ago something like that
[5:57]And I definitely want to go back to it now because the characters keep talking to me
[6:01]There's nothing I can do about it
[6:03]I mean, I didn't officially I didn't feel that I officially said goodbye to them. I couldn't
[6:10]I would say that in a sense I tried
[6:14]But they kept popping back up. So there was nothing I could do about it. I would take notes about who said what
[6:21]And who had what dream and all that sort of thing and and now I really am
[6:27]I mean now I have to go back to it. So
[6:31]Wow, that's really the story of my
[6:35]career or life as a writer and I think it should give courage to
[6:41]Young writers who don't know exactly where they're going
[6:45]Interesting how do you so I know the characters keep coming back to you, but in all of the stories
[6:51]I know that right, you know my the co-founder of my publishing firm Lee Newman always tells me about how
[6:56]Actually because she's a short story writer and how it's actually much harder to write a perfect short story
[7:01]Then in a whole novel because you have to make sure every sentence is just right
[7:04]And you don't have that much room to pull off what it is you're trying to do
[7:08]So you have to do beginning middle, you know all of this stuff
[7:10]How did you become so well-versed in the short story and how do you keep coming? How do you just how do you do it?
[7:17]How do you write great shared stories?
[7:19]Well the first of all, thank you for saying that I think the form sort of announces itself with the character
[7:27]or the characters
[7:29]But sometimes you can be deceived by the characters
[7:34]Because well because the novel that I am going to go back to began with a short story idea
[7:41]And then suddenly the characters took over and there was sort of nothing I could do about it from
[7:47]That point of view. Otherwise, I think I'm very careful about sentences
[7:54]Whether it's a short story or a novel. I'm very
[7:58]Concerned with a sentence feeling perfect to me. I can never tell what will seem perfect to a reader
[8:07]But I have to go with what seems perfect to me
[8:11]Interesting when you read do you look for the same thing
[8:15]In the books that you read. I guess I do yes, that's a very good question
[8:20]I do because I prefer books. I tend to prefer
[8:24]Writers who do write what I think of as great sentences. They're not perfect sentences
[8:31]But great great sentences that have within them phrases that just knock you out
[8:37]So like who who does that really well like one or two people not to put you on the spot
[8:42]Well, I would say Cynthia owes it does that too. That's just mind-blowing. Yeah
[8:47]In this collection
[8:49]There is a story that pays homage to the great Russian writer
[8:54]We now know he was actually Ukrainian who ever knew that but he was Isaac Bible
[9:01]And that story is in a way most interesting to me because I put him
[9:08]It's it's not it's not a fact
[9:11]But I put him in the same battlefront train that a real great
[9:17]Was on they were never on the same train together
[9:21]But I wanted because he was a writer who wrote about his experiences as a war correspondent
[9:29]And she was that she was assigned by the then so the beginning so yet
[9:35]Administration to be she was a first-year doctor. She had no choices
[9:40]They put her on a battlefront train
[9:45]And I wanted to imagine
[9:48]His meeting her and his impressions of her and of the battlefields they were going through and how it kept so he he's
[9:57]Are at salons the writer. I would say
[10:00]right, every sentence is so perfect and so beautiful.
[10:05]I think I reread that book a hundred times.
[10:08]Wow. Isn't it funny how it's, you know,
[10:12]a book can, the sense of silly,
[10:14]now that I'm saying it out loud,
[10:15]but you just don't know what you're gonna get.
[10:17]Like you, it looked, they all look the same,
[10:20]but whether you, and there's no good way to tell
[10:23]when you're picking up a book,
[10:25]and it's going to be one of these
[10:26]incredible literary masterpieces
[10:29]with the, on the sentence level.
[10:31]Or if it's going to be like a page turn,
[10:33]all you can rely on is the cover.
[10:35]Did I mean, like, you just don't know,
[10:37]yeah, you know by reputation.
[10:41]Yeah, that's true.
[10:42]I know, that didn't sound very.
[10:44]I was just, you know by reputation.
[10:46]And also if you don't know,
[10:49]you would, you know, look at it,
[10:51]you would read a little.
[10:52]You would read a little or maybe even just skim a little
[10:55]and you could tell very quickly,
[10:57]who writes a real sentence
[10:58]and who perhaps has something else in mind.
[11:01]All right, I'm going to pick it random,
[11:03]one of your senses to show off your writing chops here too.
[11:07]Let's see.
[11:08]How about this one?
[11:09]From behind all the black lines,
[11:11]Fran's eyes looked as if she was already set
[11:14]to start flirting,
[11:15]but even so her arm would not let go of Miriam shoulder.
[11:19]It was just another thing that Miriam did not like.
[11:21]Simply going from one activity to another,
[11:23]a whole bunk walked with their arms linked
[11:26]around each other's waist.
[11:27]At flag lowering, you joined hands and swayed in a semicircle.
[11:31]In swimming, you had to jump for someone else's dripping hand.
[11:34]The second the whistle blew.
[11:35]And at any time at all,
[11:37]there were counselors standing with their arms around kids
[11:39]for no particular reason.
[11:41]They were all people you hardly knew
[11:42]and we'd probably never see again.
[11:44]There was no reason to spend a whole summer hugging them.
[11:47]That's one of my story sour or sun tanned
[11:52]about a girl,
[11:53]about that very sharp eye girl in camp.
[11:57]And one of the things I've thought of just recently
[12:00]is how many of the stories I've written
[12:03]are about children who see what adults don't expect them to see.
[12:08]And how that probably happens in life
[12:12]a great deal more than people then parents say no about.
[12:17]I mean, I'm only guessing since I'm not a parent,
[12:20]but I think since I had that sense that I saw things
[12:25]that, of course, you couldn't say.
[12:27]I mean, in the stories, the character says them,
[12:30]but in life, I would never have said such things.
[12:33]Interesting, interesting.
[12:35]Here, I'll pick another, I'll pick another passage
[12:38]from a different story.
[12:40]Okay, how about this is just,
[12:41]this is a passage from other people's lives.
[12:43]Rebecca's arm was still around Maria.
[12:45]They had reached the house,
[12:46]but continued standing outside it.
[12:48]In her cold and discomfort, Louise concentrated
[12:51]on the odd quality of Rebecca's voice.
[12:53]She had quacked French verbs at students
[12:56]for so many years that now, without knowing it,
[12:58]she could not stop the quacking.
[13:01]Worse, she plowed down on words and consonants
[13:04]with lingering, lopsided lips
[13:07]and with her tongue emphasize the sounds
[13:09]that students in a dictation
[13:12]might have forgotten to underline.
[13:14]That's great.
[13:16]Not much, Zibi, I've actually sort of forgotten
[13:19]that characteristic of Louise,
[13:20]but Louise in that story is very sharp-eyed, young woman,
[13:25]no matter what her troubles are.
[13:26]And she is a very troubled girl.
[13:29]She was in a mental hospital for a couple of years
[13:34]and in this story, it's her first time out,
[13:37]they've placed her with a family on the Upper West Side.
[13:41]So I know that kind of apartment very well.
[13:44]But what I did with that, that novella,
[13:47]because that's actually an novella, not a short story.
[13:51]And I've done this in some other things also.
[13:54]I put two people together who could never really
[13:58]have been together.
[14:00]I put them in the same situation on the same place.
[14:04]And that's another way of getting ideas for them.
[14:08]I mean, because my major way of getting ideas really
[14:11]is I hear a character's voice.
[14:14]And a character is saying something.
[14:17]I have to find out who that character is.
[14:20]And almost always, there is a quick answer.
[14:23]In other words, there's another,
[14:25]that character is speaking to someone.
[14:27]Then I find out who that someone is.
[14:29]And then I have to find out more about them.
[14:32]Sometimes if I let them keep talking, they tell me.
[14:36]But sometimes I have to kind of figure it out.
[14:39]Why and who are?
[14:41]Why are they saying those things?
[14:43]And who are they?
[14:45]Interesting.
[14:46]Yeah, I hear that novellists or short story writers often
[14:50]get spoken to by characters.
[14:53]But was there ever a time when you thought
[14:55]you were just hearing voices?
[14:57]Or did you always know it was directed at a novel or on the page?
[15:01]Well, when I was a child, it was just a fantasy.
[15:04]Right.
[15:05]Children have a fantasy.
[15:07]I knew from very young that I wanted to be a writer.
[15:11]You did.
[15:12]I did.
[15:13]I didn't know that I would be able to do it.
[15:16]No, because I thought that's the greatest thing in the world.
[15:19]How do I dare imagine that I could do such a thing?
[15:23]But I'll tell you, I mean, this is going to sound rather silly.
[15:26]But one of the books I loved as a child was Heidi.
[15:31]And the author is Johanna Spirey.
[15:35]And it's about a little girl who's
[15:39]very close to her grandfather.
[15:41]And I was named Johanna.
[15:43]And I was also very close to my grandfather.
[15:46]So I thought, well, you know, she could do it.
[15:49]Perhaps I could do it too.
[15:51]Well, I had the similar thing happen with an author named
[15:54]Zibi O'Neill.
[15:56]And she wrote middle grade fiction.
[15:58]And I was, I don't know, 10, 11, something like that.
[16:00]And already loved writing.
[16:02]And I saw her book in a store on Madison Avenue.
[16:05]And I was like, wow, another Zibi.
[16:08]Well, you know what is possible?
[16:09]Who knows?
[16:12]I think that students and names
[16:14]does make a difference somehow.
[16:16]It strikes you, especially if you have an unusual name
[16:19]as I do and you do awesome.
[16:21]So it does.
[16:22]I think that's part of it.
[16:24]I think if you were named Jane, a Susan,
[16:25]it might not hit you in this way.
[16:28]No, they forget it.
[16:29]I'll never be a writer.
[16:31]I don't think anyone who wants to be a writer should ever
[16:36]say that.
[16:37]True.
[16:38]Good point.
[16:39]I mean, if you feel that you want to do it,
[16:42]you go ahead and at least try it.
[16:45]Can I not know?
[16:47]That's true.
[16:48]Yes.
[16:48]What other good advice you have for aspiring authors?
[16:53]Keep at it.
[16:55]And to read, well, especially, I think
[17:00]people who want to be writers
[17:01]tend to have read a lot in childhood.
[17:04]And I think that's an enormous boom
[17:07]and an enormous imperative, really.
[17:10]You can't.
[17:11]You can't.
[17:12]I think if you didn't read as a lot as a child,
[17:15]I don't really think you can become a writer.
[17:18]But there could be, I'm sure there are people
[17:21]who would say they didn't read a lot as children,
[17:24]but came to it at some later point.
[17:26]I know I worry because I have four kids
[17:29]and they read a little to differing degrees,
[17:32]but I read all the time.
[17:34]I mean, that was my thing.
[17:35]Maybe that was just me, but I just
[17:37]feel like it's much more rare these days
[17:39]to have total bookworms when you're
[17:41]competing with devices and all of that.
[17:43]But I think that's absolutely.
[17:45]No, I think that's true.
[17:46]And I think parents that I've heard about,
[17:49]I mean, many parents don't allow a TV in the house.
[17:53]And are very, very careful about what they allow kids
[17:58]to do on devices.
[18:00]Also, they shower them with books.
[18:02]Yeah, they read a lot and shower them with books.
[18:05]So I think that takes care of it, really.
[18:09]Also, it is bound to be harder in a world
[18:12]where there were no devices.
[18:15]And TV was very limited, really.
[18:17]When I was a child, it was very limited.
[18:19]What you had to do, really, aside from being with friends,
[18:23]reading was kind of it.
[18:25]Yeah, it's true.
[18:26]Unless you were very athletic, and that, of course,
[18:29]led to a whole different life.
[18:31]That's true.
[18:32]My only electronic growing up is this tiny little game.
[18:34]It was like a Casio game called Snoopy Tennis.
[18:37]Like, it was like a credit card size.
[18:42]And you would just like press these two buttons.
[18:44]And it lasted for I don't know.
[18:46]Anyway, it was my only electronic.
[18:49]So what are you hoping for by publishing the book now,
[18:52]this book?
[18:53]What are you hoping for?
[18:54]Who do you want to reach?
[18:56]What would make you really happy?
[18:57]I would love to read young readers.
[19:01]I mean, people from 20 to 40s, because obviously,
[19:06]I'm old enough so that the people who have read me
[19:10]and enjoyed my work tend to be on the far side of 50.
[19:16]Put it that way.
[19:17]And I would love to reach readers who are really young
[19:21]and coming to this work for the first time
[19:24]and seeing in it things that really speak to them,
[19:27]because it's a book about families, essentially.
[19:30]And the differences in generations
[19:33]and the differences in the way people become Americans.
[19:37]And I really believe that there's a profound sense
[19:42]in which we are all on the same page internally.
[19:47]I mean, because if that were not true,
[19:49]we couldn't read with pleasure
[19:51]writers who died hundreds of years ago,
[19:54]or even thousands of years ago.
[19:57]So there is something...
[20:00]inside everyone that really is the same or close enough to the same that you can make that connection
[20:08]and certainly in terms of families and children and how children grow up and what they see
[20:14]and what they perceive in the world around them, that's got to be universal. Very true.
[20:20]I love it. Amazing. Well, that's it Johanna. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for
[20:26]mastering Zoom and getting over your facing your fear and chatting with me today. I'm impressed
[20:32]and you know you have a better Zoom background than almost anyone I've interviewed. So there you go.
[20:38]Yeah, it's perfectly blurred and everything. So well done. Thank you so much Zibi. This has been
[20:44]an enormous treat for me and I'm really, really proud and thrilled to have been with you.
[20:51]Thank you. You too and Bravo and your collection and I wish you all the best of luck.
[20:56]Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Love you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
[21:01]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[21:05]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[21:10]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[21:15]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound
[21:19]for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic
[21:24]intro and out trim music.